I know it's been a while and this thread is probably about dead...however, I honestly never got over to this section that much.

I work on coin-op stuff. I've encountered a TON of these Nintendo monitors. Majority of them are made by Sanyo. There are kits sold by various coin-op suppliers to re-cap these things...gives you a bag of electrolytics and a sheet that tells you what to change. It's not just 4 or 5, I think there's about 20 that need to be changed to ensure the picture comes out halfway right. The Sanyo's are famous for curled picture.

The problem with the Nintendo games has generally been that they have an integrated audio amplifier board mounted to the monitor frame. It pulls it's power from the monitor and runs off something like 150 volts, you almost need the original monitor to use it. Generally these need at least a basic recapping to work, sometimes they need to be rebuilt if they've been plugged up incorrectly. Some Nintendo games also use an inverted video. I worked on a Space Launcher that had a 13" monitor in it. This was old-school Nintendo stuff so we thought it used standard RGB interface, however, it used all that propritary Nintendo stuff. We got the monitor working but had inverted color values and no sound.

Mikesarcade sells a replacement board that runs off 12volts that will give you the proper video and audio amplification. This will allow you to adapt a standard CGA monitor to work with the thing...however...

Super Mario Bros uses a 19" monitor...and the companies making the CRT's stopped making them...so 19" CGA gaming monitors are extremely difficult to come by and prices have shot up. Generally tubes are fine..they're just old/faded/burnt, but a chasis rebuild/repair will get it working again if you come across a standard gaming monitor that doesn't work. If you really want to get crazy, you can get 19" LCD's in a frame that will work in arcade games...we suspect as soon as the price drops to a more reasonable level we'll be going that route...but as for right now, we're rebuilding chasis.

happcontrols.com has the rebuild kits for the common old monitors. I don't remember offhand where we're getting cap-kits for our offbrand stuff..I don't do ordering at work.

mikesarcade.com has a bunch of other stuff..including the video inverter/amp board and various chips and upgrades for games (like the high-score save kit for SMB)

As far as caps aging and such.....it depends on a LOT of factors. Quite a few of these games spent a LOT of years turned off and stored in odd conditions...plus they generally used cheap caps. However, there have been cases with some equipment that's been stored in halfway decent conditions indoors and used on a semi-regular basis they'll last for years. It also depends on the type of cap. An old wax cap generally dries out...old electrolytics dry up...but things like old micas and disc caps, they last almost forever.

The vertical foldover is a common issue to the Sanyo 20EZV that nintendo used. That monitor will likely have inverted video, which without some additional hardware, makes its replacement difficult. A very inexpensive capacitor kit will resolve the foldover, as well as the faded color. It will really surprise you how good that monitor will look once recapped.

I have a Donkey Kong Jr. that needed a recap (the foldover was worse than yours) and it had jailbars. Now it looks like brand new.

Don't forget to do the audio board, as it has a number of capacitors that go bad as well.

I know the original point is sorta burried in this thread, but did this Sanyo monitor ever get recapped. Is it now all happy?

One of my crowning achievements was a complete recapping of this monitor in my 1981 Donkey Kong upright. This 19" monitor sounds like the same Sanyo one used in DK with the weird inverted video and the volume controls (hence the amp as well) on the monitor's chassis.

Mine was WAY folded over and would start rolling after like five minutes.

About 1999 I got a recap kit for this monitor and it came out good as new. Just a bag of like 15-20 caps, and there ARE some for the audio section as well. A paper came with, but not really instructions. The paper was just a couple placement diagrams and a couple lines on adjustments.

Still have the cabinet, but sold the monitor to a friend with a Radarscope machine in a red cabinet. My original DK board suffered like three scrambled ROMs all at once, and that was pretty much the end of it. Tried another friend's DK junior ROMs in the thing and could never get it out of the demo screen. Then I REALLY gave up on it.....and built a MAME cabinet of it. Still have the MAME setup, and it's nice to have in a small apartment. No room to collect machines. I still have a Frogger and Galaga up at my Dad's place, both still in great shape. Frogger does always require tweaking of edgecard connectors though.

Any Nintendo fanatics will recognize the mention of my friend's RED Radarscope cabinet. It's a prized possesion, because almost ALL Radarscope machines were gutted and converted to the first original Donkey Kong cabs. If you ever see a RED Donkey Kong machine.....GET IT! And if you actually find a Radarscope in that same familiar cabinet, but red....It's older than Mario by deffinition, and survived the conversion to Donkey Kong.

I never did get to recapping it. In fact, it ended up with a good friend of mine locally, for his game room, along with my Atari Lemans that he got some years before (that I could never get completely working). When you have a 1000 square foot house (not counting a full finished basement), you have to keep your ownership choices down to what you use.

It's still in use, in the same condition as before.....

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"Restoring a tube TV is like going to war. A color one is like a land war in Asia."

Yup...COMPLETELY understand the space thing. This little flat is NICE, but I think I only have 975 square feet total...and no garage.

I was sad and REAL apprehensive to turn the Donkey Kong cabinet into a modern computer system, but it really was the way to go if I wanted to play with other DK versions....or play my Frogger or Galaga machine without bringing them down here to San Diego.

Only about six months ago did I finally give in to converting it to an LCD. I was running a 20" CRT vga monitor for the LONGEST time to simply keep the CRT look, scanlines, etc.

Aside from the control panel....and the fact that "I" know the thing is running WindowsXP/MAME inside on a faceless WinTel chassis inside.....It really DOES make for a good stable arcade machine. Of course I've KEPT it as a DK cabinet and not done any weird MAME marquee or anything. Looks just like the original machine except I did have to build a new control panel that could handle things like Crazy Climber (two joysticks), Centipede (trackball), etc.

As sort of an homage to the original hardware though....I did mount the new hardware inside the original Faraday cage....on the same "bottom left" corner where all of it was before. It's actually MUCH cleaner than the original stuff with that huge power supply in the bottom. Also....my little "kill-a-watt" meter shows this setup pulling a little over 60watts total. The old Sanyo monitor would REALLY heat up the corner of a room before.

The old hardware also did NOT get tossed. Anything useful was given to the friend with the Radarscope cabinet. He can use that power supply if he needs to, etc. We even still have the original DK boards somewhere, even though there is something wrong with 'em.

Nintendo used pretty much the exact same Sanyo monitor in all 19" games. I mean *the same* monitor.

That's why most of them are fitted with an inverted video board, if the game doesn't have inverted video, its hooked up to the passthrough connector.

The audio amp is very interesting. I attempted to modify one to use standalone for a 13" replacement. The problem is it can't be safely converted; it runs off screen voltage. Yup, 170V is how that thing is powered.

The video inverter board, however, can be powered off 12V. Had to do this on a GameMaker video poker. Three replacement monitors gave me inverted video, so I hooked a nintendo board up.

There is hope for replacing them. There is a company that makes a board that functions as the video interter *and* audio amp. Its like a $30 board, runs off standard 12V; works like a charm.

I never did get to recapping it. In fact, it ended up with a good friend of mine locally, for his game room, along with my Atari Lemans that he got some years before (that I could never get completely working). When you have a 1000 square foot house (not counting a full finished basement), you have to keep your ownership choices down to what you use.

Yes i do understahd that!! (Alot of space is needed)

Im sorry KAMAKIN you couldnt get it working...... I have SMB1 on my Nintendo Emulator and I play alot!!

I tried the one for MAME also (The arcade version) and it doesnt run well....... I dunno if a newer version of Mame is needed or what. (I have .53)